Carburetor cleaner

[37 chief]

Years ago you could buy a pail of carb cleaner that did a good job cleaning, after soaking the carb for a while. That product is no longer available in California, and probably other states. Anything available that you know of now, to soak a carb in to remove 60 years of crud from a 65 f100 carb. Stan

 

[scootergmc]

Berryman Chem dip is still available and still does a good job.

 

[Keith True]

There is,but it's really not feasible just to do a couple of carbs.What turned me off was the paper I had to fill out to buy it.Then,I found it had a short life after opening the can.You don't strain it and put it back on the shelf.The final thing was that it was going to cost more money for a gallon can.than just sending the carb out.The ultrasonic cleaners using the juice you can buy in the parts store seem to work pretty good though.

 

[rustred]

i use the stuff from napa or bumper called Gunk. but its not like it used to be, u need to soak the carb longer , but no big deal i soak them overnight. for a gallon its probably 100.00 by now. so that's the other big thing. it stores ok as i pour it into plastic jug and dont pour the solids from the bottom in. the thing is you need something to dissolve carbon in these concoctions.

 

[DanielW]

I find the best is a combination of products: My first step is a good soak in a good degreaser (the 'Purple Clean' stuff works great, as does the degreaser made by the WD40 company). Then dry it and do a second soak in Varsol/paint-thinner (might want to go over it with a nylon brush when it's in the degreaser to ensure all caked-on gunk is removed). Even though it's two products, it still works out to be far cheaper than the pails of carb cleaner that you can get around here, and far more effective. Then a quick spray-down and blow-through of the passages with a can of brake-clean & compressed air to remove the oily film the Varsol leaves behind and let dry before assembly.

Haven't found anything that works nearly well as this method. The carb-cleaners/varsols/solvents don't do much to touch the thick greasy gunk that gets caked on the outside so you need the degreaser first. But the degreasers don't do much to touch the hardened/varnished fuel in the passages. Between the two products, the carb bodies always come out spotless.

I do the degreaser step in my ultrasonic cleaner. Not necessary, but it helps even more. And you probably know this as it's an old trick, but if you strip the plastic coating off a twist-tie, the wire inside is usually as perfect as you can get for poking through carb passages. Very thin, but surprisingly stiff.

 

[560Dennis]

Aluminum or Cast body ?
cast iron , I use purple power clean degreaser 50 /50 with water
Aluminum , I use Dawn Dish soap and water .
I have an old roaster pan container for the boiling solution.
I use my propane turkey fryer burner to boil this clean .
Use face shield and gloves to avoid the boiling splash.
Could use Dawn with cast iron , but I haven’t.
Don’t use purple power on aluminum.

 

[NDIHC]

I haven't seen anything that works like the stuff we had in the 80s. The place I worked at back then used Tyme carb cleaner. If you got it on your skit it felt like it was eating your flesh. You had to be careful not to get a breathful of the fumes. A dip in Tyme for an hour or 2, then a hot water rinse would leave you with a sparkling clean carb. I bought 5 gallons of the Napa brand carb cleaner a while ago. I could wash my hands in that stuff. I ended up dumping it in my parts washer. It's no more powerful than the Stanisol that we used to use. That stuff would leave your hands raw if you used it a lot. Makes me wonder what kind of chemicals I absorbed through my skin over the years. We didn't wear rubber gloves back then and didn't think anything of it. The newer stuff works to an extent, just takes longer and more manual scrubbing to get the same results.

 

[rustred]

i dont remember the name of the stuff we used at the GM dealership but ya it was as you say. plus there was an agitator that agitated the basket up and down in the 5 gallon pail. 10-15 minutes and it came out sparkling clean. it was common procedure to brush off the heavy dirty in the varsol sink washer before disassembly.

 

[Mike(NEOhio)]

I had a gallon of the stuff from NAPA called water seal. Had water that rose to the top to keep fumes down. Horrible smell and if a drop splashed on your hand you could smell it for a week. On clothes it was five washing to get it out. It would eat holes in metal cans so I took to storing it in a glass jug. Cleaned great but I eventually took it to our county's hazardous waste drop-off. Purple Power, Chemtool B-12 and glass bead blasting.

 

[37 chief]

I haven't seen anything that works like the stuff we had in the 80s. The place I worked at back then used Tyme carb cleaner. If you got it on your skit it felt like it was eating your flesh. You had to be careful not to get a breathful of the fumes. A dip in Tyme for an hour or 2, then a hot water rinse would leave you with a sparkling clean carb. I bought 5 gallons of the Napa brand carb cleaner a while ago. I could wash my hands in that stuff. I ended up dumping it in my parts washer. It's no more powerful than the Stanisol that we used to use. That stuff would leave your hands raw if you used it a lot. Makes me wonder what kind of chemicals I absorbed through my skin over the years. We didn't wear rubber gloves back then and didn't think anything of it. The newer stuff works to an extent, just takes longer and more manual scrubbing to get the same results.

I know what you are saying about working around chemicals. I worked around chemicals for over 40 years, in a factory that made circuit boards, for the Burroughs Co. computers. At 84 now I guess I missed the bad stuff, Stan

 

[redtom]

I had a gallon of the stuff from NAPA called water seal. Had water that rose to the top to keep fumes down. Horrible smell and if a drop splashed on your hand you could smell it for a week. On clothes it was five washing to get it out. It would eat holes in metal cans so I took to storing it in a glass jug. Cleaned great but I eventually took it to our county's hazardous waste drop-off. Purple Power, Chemtool B-12 and glass bead blasting.

You may be thinking of Hydroseal? We had 5 gallon pails at the shop i worked at. One dip and sparkling carb. You're right about the smell. If you did a carb the whole building knew it. I would use nitrile gloves and tongs to place carb on gutter drain grate. Then approach it with hot power washer from a distance like I was a fireman at a fire. Anything to keep even the slightest drip from landing on oneself. You had to keep a couple inches water on it to keep smell and evaporation down. We had that pail in our shop for years. I could've had it for free. One day when wasn't there the boss came through and asked about it and one of the other mechanics said no one used it anymore so they sent it to the hazardous disposal. I think that pail had cost like $150 when new.

 

[Masseyharrisnut]

Years ago you could buy a pail of carb cleaner that did a good job cleaning, after soaking the carb for a while. That product is no longer available in California, and probably other states. Anything available that you know of now, to soak a carb in to remove 60 years of crud from a 65 f100 carb. Stan

Nothing works like the old carb cleaner did but an ultrasonic cleaner does work really good. I’m going to get a larger one. The one I have now is not quite big enough.

 

[kencombs]

I abandoned the real stuff years ago. Mostly used lacquer thinner since. Takes a little more time and brush/wire cleaning but it works.

 

[maqbill]

I used draino the last few times with good results. My 'colleges ' at work have a bad habit of poisoning the small engines with rotten gas and leaving them sit for a few months and claim to be mystified at why they don't run.